CITY OF LONDON INVESTMENT GROUP PLC ("City of London" or "the Group" or "the Company" or "CLIG") PRE-CLOSE TRADING UPDATE FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30 JUNE 2025
LONDON, July 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- City of London (LSE: CLIG), a leading specialist asset management group offering a range of institutional and retail products investing primarily in closed-end funds ("CEFs"), provides a pre-close trading update for its financial year ended 30 June 2025. The numbers that follow are unaudited.
Funds under Management (FuM) increased by 5.6% to $10.8 billion as of 30 June 2025 as compared to $10.2 billion as of 30 June 2024.
Investment Management PerformanceIt was broadly a favourable environment for CLIM's investment strategies from a performance perspective and all strategies ended the year ahead of their benchmarks as the table below demonstrates.
CLIM strategy
Performance
Benchmark
Difference
Emerging Markets
+20.3 %
+14.8 %
+550bps
International Equity
+22.7 %
+17.7 %
+500bps
Opportunistic Value
+17.5 %
+12.8 %
+470bps
Listed Private Equity
+16.6 %
+8.0 %
+860bps
*The above returns are presented as net of fees performance figures. The CLIM Global Emerging Markets strategy is shown against the S&P Emerging Frontier Super Composite BMI Net TR Index, the CLIM Global Developed CEF International Equity Strategy is shown against the MSCI ACWI ex-US Net TR Index, the CLIM Opportunistic Value Strategy is shown against the Blended 50/50 MSCI AWCI/Bloomberg Global Aggregate Bond Index, and the CLIM Listed Private Equity Strategy is compared to an 8% annual hurdle rate. Data is as of 30 June 2025. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Firstly, our strategies have benefited from an improved environment for corporate governance. The last few years since 2022 have been characterised by a period of wide discounts among the universe of closed-end funds in which CLIM primarily sources investments. This has been particularly pronounced in the UK market where outflows from institutional and retail investors alike had resulted in depressed ratings. Such ratings allowed CLIM to accumulate positions at deeply valued price points and to work with boards to take measures to address discounts. Among other factors, these engagements helped provide the catalyst for broad-based actions by boards to narrow discounts on funds held in portfolios. Such event-driven actions included elevated levels of share buybacks, tender offers, mergers, restructurings and, in extreme cases, outright liquidations. CLIM's strategies benefited accordingly.
Secondly, heightened market volatility, particularly since the election of President Trump in late 2024, has provided additional opportunities to benefit from discount volatility, as well as market rotation, as countries, sectors, size and style factors came in and out of favour.
Lastly, outperformance by non-US equities over the last twelve months, after more than a decade of dominance by US stocks, brought new buyers to our largest areas of underlying focus, namely International Equities and Emerging Markets.
The International Equity strategy benefited from increased demand, especially for European and UK large cap exposure as well as International mid and small cap exposure.
Conversely, in addition to the factors highlighted above, the Emerging Markets strategy was meaningfully aided by its allocation to South Korean holding companies which outperformed following the Government's proposed Corporate Value Up program designed to address the "Korea Discount" by promoting capital efficiency, transparent governance and increased shareholder returns.
Likewise, KIM's main strategies performed well over the trailing twelve months.
KIM strategy
Performance
Benchmark
Difference
Growth Balanced
+12.71 %
+12.16 %
+55bps
Conservative Balanced
+9.2 %
+10.07 %
-87bps
Tax-Sensitive Fixed Income
+3.17 %
+1.10 %
+207bps
Taxable Fixed Income
+7.39 %
+5.89 %
+150bps
Cash Management
+5.96 %
+5.67 %
+29bps
Equities
+16.80 %
